Hong Kong share prices ended marginally higher yesterday as gains in the big banks offset pressure on property stocks and a steep drop in Citic Pacific's share price.
The Hang Seng Index closed up 11.04 points at 8,569.47, which left losses for the week at 4.08 per cent.
Turnover was a paltry $3.47 billion, the third quietest day this year.
Many investors stayed away with a lack of leads to trade on. United States employment figures were due to be released after the market closed.
Index futures closed at a premium to the cash market - a rare event in the past several months - which some brokers interpreted as an encouraging sign but others wrote off as technical.
Sassoon Securities sales director Vincent Cheung Wing-shun said: 'The market opened up strong but very quickly turned volatile . . . as it got closer to 8,700 a lot of large sell orders came through for individual stocks, especially for Citic.' Further dampening sentiment was the yen's slide to 139.41 against the US dollar in Tokyo after a report on Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, which was interpreted negatively.